


An Exchange of Favors

by TricksterShi



Series: The Pie Bitch 'Verse [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dean in Handcuffs, Gen, Poor Victor, Sam is Awesome (Even When He's Not All There), Sentient Plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:24:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TricksterShi/pseuds/TricksterShi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henriksen finally catches a break in the Winchester case, or so he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Exchange of Favors

He catches up with them in Arizona. 

It’s like finding a forgotten present when the call co es in, and he drives straight from Blackwater Ridge, Colorado without stopping.  Chasing after John and Dean Winchester for five years after the bank incident in California and the murders up and down the coast is a frustrating experience.  So many unanswered questions still loom in those cases, missing pieces that nag at Victor and keep him twisting and turning the evidence like a rubix cube with only half the colors as he tries to make sense of it.

Now he has Dean Winchester in custody, as well as his missing brother Sam.  Bagging Dean is a cause to celebrate, but John is still in the wind.  If he can get his hands on John then Victor will have the satisfaction of solving a handful of the most grisly and bizarre cases in the history of the Bureau and giving the families of the victims their closure.

The shiny promotion to head of the department would be nice, too.

“He’s in the interrogation room,” the sheriff, a portly man with a handlebar mustache, says after Victor arrives and they shake hands.  “Mouthy son of a bitch.”

“And Sam?”

“Real quiet.  He hasn’t said anything since we brought them in.  He seems kinda off in the head.”

That wasn’t surprising with what Victor had on John Winchester.  The evidence and background he gathered painted a bleak picture for the Winchester kids.  Daddy was a violent and bloodthirsty man with an occult fetish, and the bastard had dragged his kids along for the ride.  Sam, the youngest, seemed to have gotten out when he could and went to college.  Then he disappeared and John Winchester left a trail of mutilated bodies, break ins, and theft across California. 

“Let’s let Dean hang tight for just a while.  I want to talk to Sam first.”

#

Sam Winchester chews on his thumbnail, shoulders slumped, and eyes unfocused.  He looks healthy enough, a bit on the lean side, and his hair sticks up at odd angles, like he never got around to brushing it.  He pulls his thumb out to look at the nail, considers it, and starts working on a different section.

“So, Sam, would you mind telling me what happened at Stanford?” Victor has all the files.  He lays them out in front of him.  “I talked to quite a few people who were worried about you.”

The pothead roommate non-withstanding, of course.  That interview left Victor with a headache for days, and he never did find the Javier person the roommate insisted had been around looking for Sam as well.  Jessica Moore and Dorothy Frerecks gave him the most to go on, as well as confirmation Dean had come sniffing around not long after Sam disappeared.

Sam blinks and looks over at Victor.  It takes him a moment or two before his eyes sharpen and he’s actually present.

“Stanford?”

“Yeah, Stanford.  You disappeared off the map, Sam, had people worried about you.  Can you tell me what happened?”

Sam blinks again. 

“Oh,” he says.  He nods to himself and rubs his thumbnail on the denim of his jeans.  “Stanford.  Mackey’s.  I left the world for a little bit.”

“Out of the world, huh.”

“The Shadowlands.”

“I haven’t heard of that place before.”

“I know.”

Sam starts picking at the hole in his shirt sleeve.  Victor waits a moment and switches gears before he loses him again.

“Have you seen your dad lately?”

Sam stays quiet, his face scrunched up like he’s working out something in his head.  Victor takes the chance to study him.  This is not the Sam Winchester described to him by the witnesses at Stanford.  There had even been a video obtained from one of the class professors, a real skeezeball, that showed some study groups he’d hosted.  Sam had been an intelligent, well spoken young man and eager to help his peers.

The Sam Winchester in front of him was withdrawn and showing signs of mental confusion.  Stanford Sam had been like a sponge, and now Sam looked like he had absorbed far too much and could only sit still and wait for it to drain away. 

Victor’s first explanation was drugs, but watching Sam his gut didn’t buy it.  Maybe John had found Sam and worked him over for leaving the family. Judging by the crime scenes Daddy Winchester had enough rage in him for it.  Sam may have needed more convincing than Dean.

“Sam?” Victor prompt when Sam’s eyes go distant.

Sam frowns and turns towards the window in the small office.  He reaches out and touches one of the over sized daisies in the hanging container.  He runs his fingers over the petals. 

Victor’s eyes must be more tired than he thought, because he otherwise he could swear that the daisies turned to lean into Sam’s touch.

“Dean wants to talk to you now.”

Sam doesn’t respond to any more questions.

#

“Keep an eye on him,” Victor tells the deputy outside the door when he’s exhausted all his tricks to engage Sam in conversation again.  “And have someone run their IDs and credit cards.  I want to see if Sam spent any time in a hospital in the past five years.”

Victor has a hunch.

Victor gathers his files and slips into the side room to observe Dean Winchester before going in.  Dean leans back in the chair, posture relaxed.  He’s drumming out a beat on the table top with one of his hands, the other clasped in a loose fist.  He is handcuffed wrist and ankle, stripped of everything except his clothing and a tacky little necklace, but he looks bored more than anything.  He’s a good actor, and that wass already clear from the profiles put together over the past five years.  There is no other way he and John could have charmed their way into so many homes.

Victor settles himself and goes inside.  He coughs as the air changes and hits the back of his throat.  It’s like someone went crazy with some Febreeze.  The air is heavy and smells like damp earth.

“Hey, new face finally,” Dean says, eying him as Victor sets the stack of files on the table and sits in the hard chair.  “And a suit at that.  Wow.  I rate the big dogs, huh?”

“Well I couldn’t exactly let this opportunity pass on by, now could I Dean?  After all, we’re already acquainted.”

Dean tilts his head to the side.  His eyes, the greenest green Victor had ever seen, are brimming with curiosity and the exact opposite of Sam’s at the moment.  There’s something a little extra in them, a kind of wild streak that is unsettling and dangerous.

“I’m FBI Special Agent Victor Henriksen.  It was Fresno a few years back,” Victor supplies.  “I was on the other end of that phone.”

“Oh, yeah.  I thought you sounded familiar.”

“And here we are.  You slipped up, Dean.”

“That’s one way to look at it, I guess,” Dean smirks.

“That’s about the only way to look at it.  This isn’t your smartest move, strolling back into this town after what you and your daddy did a couple years ago.”

A whole family murdered in the dead of night, the bodies curled up and laying on strange satanic symbols a scholar in DC called ‘devils traps’.  Forensics still couldn’t figure out how they managed to damage the organs of their victims without bruising or cutting the outsides.  Yet another nagging block in the cube still shifting around. 

If he hadn’t been watching Dean he would have missed the look that flickered over his face and smoothed back out.

“We didn’t kill them,” he says.

“And yet your fingerprints were smothering the crime scene and you were witnessed buying the paint for those devils traps a couple towns over.”

“Never said we didn’t try to save those people, just that we didn’t kill them.”

Dean leans back again, body lax, and he thinks he’s in control.

“Then how did they die?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, man.”

“Fine.  Why don’t we talk about your old man and what happened in California then,” Victor opened the file and laid out crime scene photos.  There were too many to spread out, but he made sure the most gruesome were visible, even the ones that still made Victor sick.  “I’m surprised you two aren’t permanently stained with blood with as much as you shed over there.”

Dean’s eyes flick over the images, taking them in.  His fingers still on the table top, then start up drumming again abruptly. 

“You are barking up the wrong tree, man,” Dean says with a hint of weariness.

“Fingerprints put both you and your daddy at half a dozen of these.  You’re looking at the rest of your life in a windowless, isolated room at supermax, Dean.  Unless you want to tell me where John is.”

“What, and cut a deal?”

“I’m open to negotiations.  Come on, Dean.  Your daddy has some really bad anger issues, that’s plain to see,” Henrickson waved his hands over the photos.  “You can help me put him away, and I can make sure Sam is taken care of.  I can make sure John doesn’t hurt him.”

The change in Dean is instantaneous.  He straightens up and leans forward.  His face has gone dangerous calm, and his eyes are sharp under the sickly florescent lights. 

“Dad never hurt Sam.”

The tone is strong and final.  Victor raises an eyebrow.

“In Stanford Sam was acing all his exams, really going places, and vanished shortly before you and your daddy made the west coast bleed.  Fast forward five years and that boy is two steps away from staring at walls and drooling all down his front.  Call me crazy, but a kid with that bright of a future doesn’t throw it all away unless he’s forced to, or unless someone does something terrible to him.”

“Today’s an off day.”  Rigid back, muscles locked, Dean looks like he’s a breath away from trying to take a swing.

“Sure, sure, and Hannibal Lecter just had some minor issues.”  Victor gathers up the photos and puts them back in the file.  “You’re going to jail, there’s no getting around that, but I can make sure your brother gets the help that he needs and stays safe.  You play ball and I’ll make sure he gets a place at a good facility where maybe he can heal and live his life again.  All you have to do is give me John.”

Dean is impassive as he sits back and regards Victor. 

“You mind givin’ me some space so I can think?”

Dean is wavering, he’s on the hook.

“I need an answer now, Dean.  The head office is sending transport as we speak and when it arrives you get on, with or without a deal.”

“Fine,” Dean says.  “Deal.”

Victor nods.  “Wise choice.  So tell me, where is John?”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing.  He took off a while back, hasn’t been answering his phone.”

Dean’s face goes impassive again.  There’s no smirk now.

The door opens and a deputy brings in a box.  He sets it down by Victor’s elbow.

“Ah, thank you.  Well, we know he was in Colorado just a few days ago.  Does Blackwater Ridge ring a bell?”

Dean shakes his head.

Victor rummages through the box and pulls out the freaky ass journal he had been looking through just before he got the call about the brothers.  He tosses it on the table between them.

“Your daddy was there and had his motel turned into some kind of satanic alter with the pictures of twenty missing campers hanging on the walls.  He left all this behind and that,” Victor points at the journal.  “Is one of the most twisted books I’ve ever had to read.”

Dean’s psyche started to make a little more sense after reading it, since the earliest entries dated back to Dean’s childhood.  It was a wonder Sam was able to leave at all, let alone fit in and interact with others at Stanford as well as he did.

“I also ran across this in there,” Victor opened the book and noted that Dean leaned forward in the chair, eyes intent.  He flips to the back section where a page with Dean’s name and a series of numbers are circled in marker, big and distinct.  “What the hell does this mean?”

Dean looks at the page for a moment, silent.  He flicks his eyes up to Victor, smirk back in place.

“It’s my high school locker combination.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Dean.  This is your only chance here, you won’t be getting another one.”

“It’s all done, Dean.”

Victor startles, hand going to his gun, and finds Sam standing in the corner of the room like a looming shadow

“How in the-”

“The records are wiped.  We should get going,” Sam said, ignoring Victor.  The door never opened, Victor is sure.  He stands and holds a hand out, the other still on his gun.

“Sam, I need you to take a step back and-”

“You’re a good man,” Sam says, looking directly at him.  His eyes had more life and intelligence in them now, though Victor could sense something else behind them, an edge of electricity and danger beneath the open veneer.  “You really take your job seriously, and you like helping people.  I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Shelly.”

The mention of his latest ex-wife throws him off balance, as does Sam’s apparent empathy.

“You should pursue the kidnappings in Indiana, though,” Sam continues.  “You’ll be able to catch the guy.” 

Then Dean stands and the handcuffs aren’t on him anymore.  They’re laying on the table and they never made a sound.  Dean cracks his neck and picks up the journal.  He waggles it at Victor.

“Thanks for this.”

Victor raises his hand and then he’s all alone in the room.  The brothers just poof, vanish, no sound or anything.

The sheriff bursts into the room, eyes wide and confused, gun out, but there’s nothing to shoot at.  They both stand motionless and slack jawed.  The sheriff clears his throat.

“Uh, agent…” he points at the table.

A fresh steaming pie sits on the table with a white card propped on top, a chicken scratch Thank You scrawled in blue ink with a name and address in Indiana.

An enormous crack of thunder echoes from outside and doesn’t quite cover the revving of an engine before it fades away.


End file.
